Schopenhauer and Richard Flanagan staged a virtual intervention and made me realise I have a problem. I don’t know about acknowledging a higher power and all that, but I’ve decided to Cut. Down. On. My. Reading. Habit.
So, I resolved, there’ll be no more reading before the sun is over the yardarm. I’ll take the dog on her morning walk bookless.
Yesterday was the first day of this desolate new regime. I left American Rust beside my bed. As I was packing the plastic bags, I caught my addictive brain thinking, ‘Maybe I could just slip the anthology of Chinese poems in as well.’ Resisting that temptation, I then had to stop my hand from picking up the Asia Literary Quarterly of its own volition, and then the Monthly. But I got out the door with no printed matter about my person, had a very pleasant walk and on my return actually managed to engage with my current writing project sufficiently to get some words on paper.
And I got to notice odd things around the suburb, like this big button squash put out to ripen in a back lane, for all the world like a pumpkin in a French village:
I still allow myself to read on the afternoon dog-walk. Yesterday we went on a 30-page excursion.
Me fail? I fly! 